


Or would they go on aching still

by Farasha



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canon Timeline, F/F, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Immortality, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-10 03:45:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5569765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Farasha/pseuds/Farasha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tauriel comes to Gondor in the days of the king. Arwen wants to help her carry the grief she shoulders, but in the end, they help each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Or would they go on aching still

The first time she saw the silvan elf, red of hair and pale of cheek, Arwen only noticed her because Legolas of the Greenwood embraced her as an old friend. Otherwise she surely would not have marked the occasion, as caught up as she was in coronation and wedding felicitations alike. On that day, the dawning of the Fourth Age and the celebration of the end of their long struggle against the Enemy and his ilk, her joy was untempered by the looming passage of time.

It was later, as she caught Legolas fondly watching his companion Gimli quaff an unlikely amount of ale from one side of the banquet hall, that she had occasion to ask, "Who was the maiden from the courtyard earlier, who you knew?"

"Ah, Tauriel." Some of the fond cheer in Legolas's face dimmed, his smile fading around its corners. "It is no fit thing to speak of on a day such as this."

Arwen followed Legolas's gaze around the hall until she found Tauriel with her eyes. She stood apart, her mein serene, and spared only the smallest of polite smiles to those that caught her eye. "I would know what dims the light in her eyes, that I may help if it be within my ability."

"It is kind of you to wish so, but I fear none can ease the pain she carries, as it is born of grief, and such things are carried for long years. Tauriel's love was slain, and still she mourns."

A lance of sharp empathy pierced Arwen's breast. "Did he fall at Helm's Deep, then? I know many of the number of Lothlórien found their fate there."

Legolas shook his head. "He fell defending the King Under the Mountain some years ago, on the battlefield of Erebor. He was the sister-son of Thorin son of Thráin. Kíli was his name."

"A dwarf?" The thought surprised her, though by the returning smile on Legolas's face, it shouldn't have.

"They have such a fierce joy about them, Aulë's children," he said, his gaze returning to Gimli's once again. "Like a bright flash of tempering flame. Do they not?"

Arwen glanced at him sidelong, a smile pulling at her own lips. "Is it your choice as well, then, to forsake the Western shore and tarry here, through the dawning of the Age of Men?"

"Ah, well!" Legolas shook his head. "What may come yet for me, I cannot say - only that where Gimli goes, then so shall I." He paused, again uncharacteristically pensive, and it struck Arwen how his youthful cheer had been muted by the hardships faced on his long journey since leaving Imladris. "I would ask of you a boon, if you would permit."

"Ask, and if it is within my power to grant, I shall. If I know my husband - and I do, very well - it is you and your dwarf I have to thank for seeing him to Gondor in one piece."

Legolas laughed at that, and Arwen saw Gimli mark it from across the room, his beard splitting in a white smile. Legolas's eyes softened, and if Arwen had doubted that their companionship was as deep and enduring as hers and Aragorn's, she did not doubt it now.

"The elves of the Greenwood have never held close ties with the rest of our folk, preferring to manage our own lands and dwell in peace. But our time is over, and my father's people will take their leave of Middle Earth ere long. Tauriel has dwelt of late in Lothlórien - but that home, too, will be gone from her in the coming years. I have spoken with her, and she does not desire to sail to the West, where she will come not to Aulë's halls."

Arwen could not conceive of how wholly Tauriel must grieve - and then, because dread was swift to follow in the footsteps of sorrow, the thought came unbidden that one day she would. Aragorn was mortal, and he would one day pass beyond. She herself would linger, a fading shadow of a more glorious age. A shiver coursed through her, and she swallowed. "You wish me to extend an invitation for her to dwell in Gondor."

"Yes. I believe it would do her well to have a friend of her own people. I was her friend, once, though I fear I have not been so in recent years. It would do my heart glad to know she had a place at your side."

"She shall have it," Arwen said firmly. "I am a queen now, and a queen has need of a guard. If she will accept, I will give her the charge of it."

Legolas nodded. "She was captain of the Greenwood's guard when my father's realm was still plagued by Sauron's shade, and faced many dangers in that capacity. I believe it would do her well to feel purpose again."

And so it was that Tauriel of the Greenwood became Captain of the Queen's Guard - and to Arwen's delight, filled those ranks with shieldmaidens of Rohan and warrior-women of Gondor. Evenstar's Ladies, they became known as, and the folk of Minas Tirith spoke of them in tones of awe - all of them fair and deadly, and none so much as their Captain. Still, Arwen and Tauriel did not speak overmuch beyond the professional, and Arwen feared that Legolas's wish that Tauriel might find a friend in her was overestimated.

"She is reserved, your Captain," Aragorn mused, one night when she spoke to him of her concerns. Eldarion slept peacefully on her breast, still too young to wish to be parted from his mother for long, and they spoke quietly over his head. "She bears her grief like a shield to keep the world at bay - too heartsick to see aught but loss in potential companionship."

Oftentimes it was easy for Arwen to forget that her husband was a king, the scion of the line of Elendil. Then he would say such, that pierced to the core of the matter and saw what others might overlook, and she remembered.

"You think then that she would not welcome an extended hand?" She shifted Eldarion, who murmured softly in his sleep, so she could press closer to Aragorn's side. He did not yet show signs that his long years were dwindling, but she knew that one day it would come, and she ached to think of it.

"I think she has been isolated for so long she may have forgotten that joy, however fleeting, is always worth the risk of loss." Aragorn kissed her forehead softly, as if he had seen through her heart as well, and her fears eased for a time.

Arwen thought, given Aragorn's words, that it would be necessary for her to approach Tauriel. The kindling of their friendship, though, came to pass quite differently.

She had known when her father left Gondor mere months after the coronation that he did so to ready Imladris for his departure West. Still, as the years passed and no word came from him, Arwen dwelled in hope.

Eldarion had just turned five and she was heavy with child again when her hopes were at last laid to rest. A courier riding under her grandmother's banner brought the word - Imladris and Lothlórien were emptied, and the last ship would depart for the Havens some months hence. With them would travel the ringbearers, Bilbo and Frodo, whose hearts carried heavy shadows that could not be mended in Middle Earth.

Arwen walked the garden alone in bitterness, one hand on the fullness of her stomach, the letter clutched in her hand, her feet bare over the grass. If she were not so late with child, she could go and bid farewell to the last of her kin. But it was a long way from Gondor to the far West beyond the Shire - over a year's journey with strong riders. In her condition, it would take Arwen much longer, and she could not bid the ships stay on her account.

She had grown so used to the presence of Evenstar's Ladies that she barely noted them now, save that they were always at her side or not far from it. So she started when gentle fingers touched her elbow.

Tauriel was there, her face grave. "Legolas received word from his father as well," she said quietly, nodding to the letter in Arwen's hand. "He would go see them away, but he fears Lady Galadriel's prophecy - already his heart has been struck by the sea, and he is not ready to be quit of Middle Earth."

Arwen knew very well why Legolas was not ready. "The three of us are all that remains across the vast lands of Middle Earth." Arwen dashed tears from her face - she did not realize she had been weeping. "Bound here by love. Ah! What a sweet and bitter choice it is."

"Some have more of the sweet, and others more of the bitter." Tauriel's gaze was unfocused, staring into the distance, and Arwen again felt that painful kinship with her.

"The dwarf you loved," she said softly. "Will you speak to me of him?"

Tauriel looked at her then, her eyes so green and sad that Arwen was breathless with it. "Perhaps on a day when you are not already consumed by bitterness. I fear my own would only add to it."

She turned to go, but Arwen caught her arm. "If it is to be that, the three of us alone until the unmaking of the world, I would pass those years in friendship."

Tauriel smiled at her, then. It was the first time Arwen had seen her truly smile - not the polite curve of the lips she showed when courtesy demanded, but something like the cheerfulness she must have had before loss dulled it. "Your kindness is ever your greatest virtue."

"I mean what I say," Arwen insisted. That smile, dimmed though it was with Tauriel's ever-present sorrow, was something Arwen wanted to see again. Tauriel had a grave beauty to her, but when she smiled it was lit with a fair, fae cast.

"I know. If speaking of my sorrow will ease some of your loneliness, then I will - but not today. Not when your own sorrow is still so near." She stepped back to her silent post at the edge of the garden, and Arwen resolved that she would find any way she could to bring Tauriel joy.

The last ship sailed West while Arwen still lay in her birthing bed, bearing all the kin that were not her children. She named her daughter Galadriel, in memory of the grandmother so recently departed from the land where she would grow up, and wept again for the loss. Aragorn, insightful at times though he was, thought it due to the birth and murmured nonsense against her hair as he held her.

It was later, when little Galadriel nursed at her mother's breast and Aragorn had at last departed, that Tauriel slipped into Arwen's bedchamber. "I heard what you named her," she said, hands locked behind her back as she looked at the tiny swaddled thing Arwen held.

Arwen patted the bed beside her - Aragorn's recently vacated place - and Tauriel perched there like she might jump to her feet at any moment. "Do you want to hold her?"

In all the years Arwen had known the Captain of her Queen's Guard, she had never seen the other elf blush the way she did now. The tips of her ears pinked and her face colored from her neck to her high cheekbones, the light dusting of freckles across her nose standing out sharply. "I've never," she whispered, a confession that would not have been out of place among elves but seemed strange surrounded by Men. "I never wed, and never bore children."

Arwen tugged at her elbow gently, and Tauriel shifted closer, letting Arwen arrange her arms in a cradle. Galadriel made a discontented sound when Arwen nudged a finger between her lips, breaking the seal the child had made over her breast, but she settled again when Arwen placed her gently in Tauriel's arms.

"Galadriel," Tauriel breathed, awe stealing over her face. "You have a name out of legend, little one. Bear it proudly and in honor."

Galadriel only yawned. Arwen watched as Tauriel's fingers ghosted above her daughter's fine hair, golden yet - though it would likely darken. Eldarion had been born golden-haired, but it had darkened before he cut the first of his milk teeth. Still, Arwen found herself wishing that little Galadriel's head remained fair, a mark of her grandmother's line carried truly into her children.

"I dreamed of this, once." Tauriel's voice was a bare whisper. Arwen held her breath, waiting for more but afraid to push. "Dwarves love their families fiercely, and children are rare. Kíli would have wanted a dozen, like as not. We never had a chance to speak of it, but I wondered."

Arwen fussed with Galadriel's swaddling and laughed quietly when the child caught hold of her finger, pulling it to her mouth and worrying it with her gums. "Eldarion was sweet, too, when he was this young. I know it's hard to believe now."

Tauriel ducked her head, smiling - one of her rare, true smiles. "He is still sweet. Bold-hearted, like his father, but he has his mother's kindness."

"He grows so fast." Arwen watched the tiny bundle in Tauriel's arms and felt, unbidden, an ache of dread pierce her. One day, her children would grow and wed and have children of their own, and Arwen would be unchanged. One day, she would watch them pass.

"Arwen." Tauriel reached out and dabbed her sleeve at Arwen's cheeks, and she realized she was weeping again.

"Ah, Tauriel. At times I believe the Valar's youngest children are their most fortunate. Their lives are fleeting, but they need not linger when all those they love have gone."

"Dwell not on such thoughts," Tauriel said gently, still dabbing at her face. Arwen gave her a watery smile in return and watched something steal over her face. Tenderness, then surprise, then abruptly her expression shuttered back into serenity. Gently, she passed Galadriel back to her mother's arms. "You do not have to face it yet."

Arwen watched her leave hastily, wondering at what she had seen.

In the many years that passed after, Arwen learned more of Kíli, sister-son to the King Under the Mountain. It seemed that after that first time, it was easier for Tauriel to speak of him. She laughed over his stubborn pride, reminisced softly about his bright spirit, and once, haltingly and in the dark of night, told Arwen of how he fell.

Arwen ruled at Aragorn's side and raised their children. Galadriel, true to Arwen's wish, never lost the gold in her hair, though it was a darker shade than her grandmother's had been, honey instead of white-gold. Still, every time Legolas and Gimli came to Gondor, the dwarf slapped his hand to his breast as if struck and beseeched her daughter for a hair from her beautiful, golden head. Galadriel the Fair, they called her.

They were gifted with more daughters - bright Elwing, who loved nothing as well as books and ink. Fierce Gilraen, named for Aragorn's mother, who even at the tender age of six went running after her brother's sword practice, shrieking and flailing her chubby arms, furious at being left out.

She watched Eldarion grow into a fair young man more rapidly than she ever expected. Through her blood and the birthright of Númenor, it was not as quickly as some of the other children she watched grow, going from toddling babes to sword-wielding warriors of Gondor in the blink of an eye, but it was still well before she was ready that her son stood tall and proud beside his father's throne, learning to rule with a circlet on his dark hair.

Aragorn was changing now before her very eyes. No longer could she deny the creeping hand of time. It carved lines in his face and whitened his hair, stiffened his bones along the lines of old injuries and slowed his steps. Arwen lay awake at night with her head on his breast, listening to the beat of his heart and the slow rise of his breathing. 

On those nights, more than ever, she realized what her father had tried to tell her. She remained, just as untouched by age as when she first wed, when she bore her son, when she saw him wed in turn. The women of Evenstar's Ladies grew old and retired, and fresh young faces took their place.

Through it all, Tauriel was her stalwart companion, the confidant of her heart. She could understand, in a way others could not. Legolas, too, seemed somewhat dimmed of late when he and Gimli came to Gondor - and Arwen knew why, when she saw hearty Gimli out of breath at the top of a stair, his beard gone grey. Only they three were left, of the eldest children of Middle Earth. Only they three knew what it was to pass through time untouched, watching it ravage what they loved.

Arwen was awake in the dim light of false dawn when Aragorn's chest rose and fell for its final time. They laid him to rest beside his forefathers, and as the cold marble lid of his sarcophagus covered his face, Arwen thought she too was dying, so terrible was the pain of it. And yet it seemed she had no tears left to weep, having spent them all in the privacy of their bower, wailing inconsolably as her grown children surrounded her.

It wasn't until Tauriel came, a silent pillar of constancy, that she allowed herself to be moved from Aragorn's side so they could bear him away. And it wasn't until Tauriel came for her again, in the cold midnight under the pitiless light of the stars, that she left the tomb, where the marble visage of Aragorn's face would lie serene until it too was claimed by the ravages of time.

Arwen clung to her and wept, the tears she had thought spent coming bitterly and without cease, until dawn broke over the White Tower of Ecthelion. At last, her weeping dwindled to wet hiccups, and she shuddered in the firm circle of Tauriel's arms. It was with dry eyes that she stood beside her son - at his left, now, while his queen sat at his right - as they lowered his father's crown onto his brow. The king was dead. Long live the king.

She thought to steal away, later, without any to notice or stop her before she went, but as she turned from running her fingers one last time over her royal finery, which would have no place in the wilds, Tauriel was there in the doorway. She had put off her livery, and no longer wore the White Tree of Gondor at her breast. Instead, she was clad in a simple leather jerkin, armed with her short knives at her sides and her bow at her back.

Arwen stood, likewise dressed for travel, and let out a long breath like a sigh. "I cannot bear to stay. Not and watch my son and daughters grow old and pass as he did."

"I know." Tauriel offered her hand, and Arwen took it. "I promoted Morwen of Rohan to Captain of the Queen's Guard - at least until Gilraen loses some of that recklessness."

Arwen's throat was tight with gratitude. "Do you know, when Legolas first asked a boon of me that I would grant you a home in Gondor and a place in my household, he hoped that I might become your friend. That it would ease some of your grief."

"You have," Tauriel said softly. Once more, Arwen saw tenderness in her face, though this time she did not hide it away as she had so many years ago with Galadriel tiny in her arms. "Oh, Arwen, I never expected I might find any balm for the pain of my heart, but you have brought it. If I can do the same for you now, I will count it as a task worth undertaking."

Arwen squeezed her hand gently, watching her freckles stand out against her blush, and wondered at the ease it brought to her heart. "I believe you always have, even before I knew I needed it. Will you tarry with me through the wilds of our world until at last the stars dim and fall into the sea?"

"If you will have me, my lady, I will go anywhere you lead." Tauriel said. Slowly, as if she expected Arwen to pull away, she brought Arwen's fingers to her lips.

Arwen wondered if she might have always loved her, even as she loved her husband. Once, she had told Aragorn that she would rather spend a lifetime with him than face all the ages of the world alone. That truth still held, but as the two of them slipped out the gates of Gondor in the lingering twilight, riding side by side so close their knees brushed, she was glad she was not alone. That Tauriel was with her, and would always be, until the unmaking of the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "I measure every Grief I meet (561)" by Emily Dickinson


End file.
